84 Trabant 601 after years of neglect

After bringing the corpse home i dissasambled the carb to clean it and unclog the fuel cock... in the process of which i found out that carb cleaner also dissolves the enamel of my bathtub
With the carb back on and fresh fuel in the tank i managed to fire it up again and after some fiddling with the iddle screw i managed to get it to stop dying on me. Happy with my results i decided to take it for a test drive and see what other adjustments needed to be done, during witch my front bumper decided to take an early retirement plan and sheered the only bolt it was hanging on to.

After parking it and fully taking the bumper off i decided to check and see why the power delivery was so jumpy when i noticed the back engine mount was broken (probably during loading/unloading on the flatbed) witch let the engine wobble back and forth yanking on the acceleration cable by itself.

For now i decided to leave the engine compartment alone and tend to the rust that plagues the car. Luckly about 15 years ago my dad decided to pour old engine oil in the chassis witch saved most of it. I can t say the same thing about the floor of the car though. It is full of rust and the trunk was an especially big issue.
After struggling a bit to remoove the stripped and rusted screws on the quarter pannel it came off with a little pop of the antique glue breaking.
After taking an angle grinder with a brush wheel to the floor it mostly just disintegrated leaving me with a big hole



Luckly for me the chassis is not in a bad shape, the only structural piece rotted being the strengthening strip that follows the wheelwell

I started work in the metal flange that holds the rear quarter pannel glued on, and cut a piece of it that was rotted and bent.

After that i spent a few hours shaping a patch and getting the edges to alig just right with a dremmel, wich in the end was pointless


After all that fiddling with the patch to get it perfect i put the pannel back on the car and left the project to sit for a few days.... during which it rained and some verry light surface rust got on the flange. Not a big deal, I just cleaned it with a wire brush wheel. Whati failed to take into account was the fact that the wire wheelalso shaved off a little bit of metal, making my perfect patch no longer perfect. I decided not to make another one and just use the one i made and fill the gap in while welding... well i'm not at all proud of how it came out as the pannel behind the stoplight is not completly straigh but i guess it holds?